Fixing Your Damn Tractor
Big wins in the fight for Right to Repair
Welcome to You’re Probably Getting Screwed, a weekly newsletter and video series from J.D. Scholten and Justin Stofferahn about the Second Gilded Age and the ways economic concentration is putting politics and profits over working people.
“You should be able to fix your damn tractor.”
That was a line I heard often from former Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Kanter. It cut right at the way companies, particularly but not exclusively Big Tech, have eroded the basic concept of ownership. The digital world might have helped us declutter, but in the process it replaced ownership with an “everything is a subscription” model that leaves us with little control. Consider the fears this week that Sony might have just quietly rolled out a new system requiring buyers of digital games go online every 30 days to validate the games license. The slow erosion of our rights over the digital items we purchase is bad enough, but the ubiquitous use of software impacts the physical items we buy as well, which was the issue Kanter was describing.
For years manufacturers have used software locks to limit control over our smart phones, laptops, appliances and even agricultural equipment like tractors and combines. As physical items become more digitized and loaded up with software, the problem will only worsen. This is what is at the heart of the right to repair movement and why in addition to the efforts to protect independent repair shops and limit the mountains of electronic waste we now generate, the movement more fundamentally is about re-establishing individual rights over the things we buy. While we have a long way to go to re-establish true ownership over our stuff and ensure Americans have the right to repair, this week has provided some hope.
Colorado has been a leader in the right to repair movement. In 2023 they became the first state to pass agricultural right to repair, ensuring farmers have a competitive market for repair. Modern farm equipment like tractors and combines rely heavily on software with a single combine having as many as 125 software-connected sensors. This machinery is also very expensive with tractor list prices ranging from $216,444 to $778,865 and combine list prices between $645,700 and $818,200. Those prices have risen rapidly in recent years as well. For all that dough, farmers get locked into an equipment monopoly where just three companies produce 95% of tractors and John Deere accounts for over half. Despite the astounding costs of machinery, the real money is in the repairs.
Problems with a software-enabled component, even a simple diagnostic error code, will send machines into “limp mode” and make them useless. To get the tools, manuals, and diagnostic equipment necessary to make needed repairs, farmers have to go through manufacturers and authorized dealers which can cost farmers thousands of dollars and result in delays during planting and harvest. This is why the Federal Trade Commission and several states have an ongoing lawsuit alleging Deere has monopolized the market for repair to the detriment of farmers and independent repair shops. Colorado’s right to repair law would end Deere’s grip over the repair market.
A year after passing that law, Colorado followed it up with a broader consumer right to repair law ensuring people have access to the tools necessary to fix digital electronics like phones, computers, and Wi-Fi routers. Four other states in recent years have passed these types of consumer-facing laws (California, Minnesota, Oregon, New York), but Colorado remains the only one to have passed agricultural right to repair (more on that below). Powerful corporations do not concede defeat easily though and this session companies like Cisco and IBM made a push to exempt “critical infrastructure” from Colorado’s right to repair law. The loosely defined term could have applied to just about any technology and blown a hole in the law, but this week the Colorado House State, Civic, Military, and Veterans Affairs Committee shot down the tech-backed effort 7-4.
Right to repair advocates are not only playing defense though. The Iowa House, a body that many readers know is controlled by Republicans 67-33 passed an agricultural right to repair bill with overwhelming bipartisan support this week. The bill requires manufacturers of agricultural equipment to make documentation, parts, software, firmware, and tools related to the repair or maintenance of equipment available to independent repair facilities and equipment owners at “fair and reasonable” terms and costs. Thanks to JD, the bill also has provisions to ensure that data collected by equipment manufactures on farmers cannot be sold to other businesses that might impose surveillance pricing. JD also connected right to repair to Iowa’s antitrust leadership in the past.
“In 1888, in this very building, the Iowa Legislature passed and the governor signed into law the country’s first antitrust law to protect farmers from an abusive railroad,” said Scholten. “This bill here before us today is an ancestor of that historic law.”
On one hand the victories in Colorado and Iowa could be seen as minor. Colorado was beating back bad policy and the Iowa Senate still needs to take action on right to repair. One the other hand, this is a model for what the antimonopoly movement can look like. An often overlooked historical lesson of the past four decades is that antimonopoly in some ways became a victim of its own success. The New Deal coalition so successfully beat back corporate power it faded from the headlines as an issue and exposed the vigilance we must have on these issues as big corporations will not back down. That’s what the fight in Colorado particularly embodied.
Iowa’s passage of right to repair demonstrates the potential appeal of populist issues to communities and constituencies across the political spectrum. Bringing together unique coalitions of farmers, consumers, workers and small businesses is the kind of political project we must have in order to restore fairness in this country. That work can and should be bipartisan.
Plenty more fights await the right to repair movement, but this week was a good one!
YOU’RE PROBABLY (ALSO) GETTING SCREWED BY:
Surveillance Pricing
Speaking of vigilance and bad policy, Maryland passed a ban on surveillance pricing this week. Well, at least that is what Governor Wes Moore and legislative leaders there want you to believe. Unfortunately the bill, which is the first surveillance pricing legislation to go into effect in any state, sets a terrible precedence for consumers. As Pat Garofalo and Lee Hepner explain in Boondoggle, the law is “riddled with loopholes, exemptions, and other problems.” Do better Maryland!
If you are looking for a surveillance pricing bill that does actually ban this creepy and predatory practice, there are few stronger than the one sponsored by Rep. Javier Mabrey in Colorado. Here he is discussing the issue.
Credit Card Fees
I mentioned last week in relation to Amazon’s price-fixing tactics that consumer issues and small business issues can be one in the same. Another good example of that dynamic are credit card fees. These outrageous fees from the credit card duopoly not only raise costs for consumers, they are a massive cost small businesses face. In my day job I’ve been convening roundtables of small business owners across Minnesota and credit card fees continue to come up as a major cost small retailers face that also makes shopping locally more expensive.
Nebraska Senate candidate Dan Osborn has a new video highlighting this problem and its exactly the kind of Main Street populism I would love to see from more political candidates. Osborn even highlights President Trump’s support for prohibiting these fees although it should be noted that despite Trump decrying swipe fees as a “ripoff” his administration is working to federally preempt an Illinois law banning swipe fees on taxes and tips paid in the state and has issued rules discouraging other states from regulating swipe fees. Talk about a ripoff.
AI Utopia
The headline of this recent 404 Media article says it all. “Startups Brag They Spend More Money on AI Than Human Employees.” Below is the reporter who wrote the story, Jason Koebler, recalling a conversation he had with a startup CEO regarding AI spending.
SOME GOOD NEWS:
States join effort to address Kalshi
Back in December attorney Michael Selig was sworn in as the chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), a little known regulatory agency tasked with regulating commodity futures and options. It is often referred to as the little brother or sister of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), although these days I would find that description offensive to siblings. While the agency is still tasked with policing fraud in commodity futures the emergence of crypto and prediction markets have expanded its purview. For his part, Selig has made it his mission to be the biggest crypto shill possible, including threatening litigation against states that try to regulate sports-related events on prediction platforms as sports gambling.
Selig is not scaring away the states! Back in September, Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell sued Kalshi for “promoting and accepting online sports wagers from Massachusetts customers without following the many Massachusetts laws that govern sports gaming, including licensure by the Massachusetts Gaming Commission (MGC).” This week 38 state attorneys general filed an amicus brief in the case supporting Attorney General Campbell saying they are “interested in this case because Kalshi’s aggressive theory of preemption threatens the States’ longstanding ability to protect their citizens in this area.”
BEFORE YOU GO
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Break Em Up,
Justin Stofferahn